Another Certification under my belt
I just passed my SCWCD (Sun Certified Web Component Designer) test with an 86%. So thats two certifications under my belt. This certifies that I know JSP, servlets, custom tags, EL and a smattering of OO patterns. It was a pretty brutal test. I spent about 7 weeks preparing for it…and we are talking long study sessions and tons of exercises. There are books to help you out, but for the most part, it is self directed study.
Was it worth it? Well…maybe. I now have a very good idea of how they work and could probably do ok in a job interview. The material REALLY helped in my last interview with SWA. Im still waiting on the results for that.
The big thing is that I can put it on my resume. This is a big deal in the tech world. ALL resumes are searched, scanned, sorted and trashed E-lec-tron-ically with search engines. With the job market like it is, an employer just has to search for all the suitable resumes by keyword. Since many JAVA jobs need JSP, they just trash the resumes that don’t have those keywords before even looking at them. It doesn’t matter if you have the PERFECT resume…if you don’t have those critical keywords, nary a human eye will gaze upon it.
So, whats to stop me from just putting on those things on paper. Integrity. I feel that my resume needs to reflect who I am. I would never put a skill down that I didn’t feel good about. There are a few that I have not used for a while…like LDAP, or C++, but I know it well enough to get back to the swing of things quickly.
I did find a trick to get by the robots. I do NOT have a problem with the following strategy.
So you are getting kicked out of the pool because you dont have SOA, Soap, JAX, and the like. You know enough to interview, but your resume is not getting the right hands. This certification process is GOLDEN. Just put in your resume that you are studying for the next certification that covers those keywords.
In progress: SCDJWS Certification: SOA, SOAP, JAX and whatever.
The robots will let you pass and you have a better chance that human eyes will decide your fate.
So, its time to update the resume. In fact…if your on Monster and all of those boards, I found that just refreshing the resume helps. Change your statement, reorder your skills…anything. Fools the robots.